Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race

Page: 240

See the map of comparative nigrescence given in Ripley's “Races
of Europe,” p. 318. In France, however, the Bretons are not a
dark race relatively to the rest of the population. They are composed
partly of the ancient Gallic peoples and partly of settlers from
Wales who were driven out by the Saxon invasion.

Vergil might possibly mean “the very-bright” or illustrious
one, a natural form for a proper name. Ver in Gallic names
(Vercingetorix, Vercassivellasimus, &c.) is often an intensive prefix,
like the modern Irish fior. The name of the village where Vergil
was born, Andes (now Pietola), is Celtic. His love of nature, his
mysticism, and his strong feeling for a certain decorative quality
in language and rhythm are markedly Celtic qualities. Tennyson's
phrases for him, “landscape-lover, lord of language,” are suggestive
in this connexion.

Irish is probably an older form of Celtic speech than Welsh.
This is shown by many philological peculiarities of the Irish language,
of which one of the most interesting may here be briefly referred to.
The Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who, according to the usual theory,
first colonised the British Islands, and who were forced by successive
waves of invasion by their Continental kindred to the extreme west,
had a peculiar dislike to the pronunciation of the letter p. Thus
the Indo-European particle pare, represented by Greek παρά, beside
or close to, becomes in early Celtic are, as in the name Are-morici
(the Armoricans, those who dwell ar muir, by the sea); Are-dunum
(Ardin, in France); Are-cluta, the place beside the Clota (Clyde), now
Dumbarton; Are-taunon, in Germany (near the Taunus Mountains),
&c. When this letter was not simply dropped it was usually changed
into c (k, g). But about the sixth century B.C. a remarkable change
passed over the language of the Continental Celts. They gained in
some unexplained way the faculty for pronouncing p, and even
substituted it for existing c sounds; thus the original Cretanis became
Pretanis, Britain, the numeral qetuares (four) became petuares,
and so forth. Celtic place-names in Spain show that this change
must have taken place before the Celtic conquest of that country,
500 B.C. Now a comparison of many Irish and Welsh words shows
distinctly this avoidance of p on the Irish side and lack of any objection
to it on the Welsh. The following are a few illustrations:

Irish

Welsh

English

crann

prenn

tree

mac

map

ton

cenn

pen

head

clumh (cluv)

pluv

feather

cúig

pimp

five

The conclusion that Irish must represent the older form of the
language seems obvious. It is remarkable that even to a comparatively
late date the Irish preserved their dislike to p. Thus they
turned the Latin Pascha (Easter) to Casg; purpur, purple, to corcair,
pulsatio (through French pouls) to cuisle. It must be noted, however,
that Nicholson in his “Keltic Researches” endeavours to show
that the so-called Indo-European p—that is, p standing alone and
uncombined with another consonant—was pronounced by the
Goidelic Celts at an early period. The subject can hardly be said to
be cleared up yet.

Compare Spenser: “I have heard some greate warriors say, that
in all the services which they had seen abroad in forrayne countreys,
they never saw a more comely horseman than the Irish man, nor that
cometh on more bravely in his charge ... they are very valiante
and hardye, for the most part great endurours of cold, labour, hunger
and all hardiness, very active and stronge of hand, very swift of
foote, very vigilaunte and circumspect in theyr enterprises, very
present in perrils, very great scorners of death.”

The scene of the surrender of Vercingetorix is not recounted by
Cæsar, and rests mainly on the authority of Plutarch and of the
historian Florus, but it is accepted by scholars (Mommsen, Long, &c.)
as historic.

These were a tribe who took their name from the gæsum, a kind
of Celtic javelin, which was their principal weapon. The torque,
or twisted collar of gold, is introduced as a typical ornament in the
well-known statue of the dying Gaul, commonly called “The Dying
Gladiator.” Many examples are preserved in the National Museum
of Dublin.

“Cæsar's Conquest of Gaul,” pp. 10, 11. Let it be added
that the aristocratic Celts were, like the Teutons, dolichocephalic—that
is to say, they had heads long in proportion to their breadth.
This is proved by remains found in the basin of the Marne, which
was thickly populated by them. In one case the skeleton of the tall
Gallic warrior was found with his war-car, iron helmet, and sword,
now in the Music de St.-Germain. The inhabitants of the British
Islands are uniformly long-headed, the round-headed “Alpine” type
occurring very rarely. Those of modern France are round-headed. The
shape of the head, however, is now known to be by no means a constant
racial character. It alters rapidly in a new environment, as is shown by
measurements of the descendants of immigrants in America. See an
article on this subject by Professor Haddon in “Nature,” Nov. 3, 1910.

In the “Tain Bo Cuailgne,” for instance, the King of Ulster must
not speak to a messenger until the Druid, Cathbad, has questioned
him. One recalls the lines of Sir Samuel Ferguson in his Irish epic
poem, “Congal”:

“... For ever since the time
When Cathbad smothered Usnach's sons in that foul sea of slime
Raised by abominable spells at Creeveroe's bloody gate,
Do ruin and dishonour still on priest-led kings await.”

It was the practice, known in India also, for a person who was
wronged by a superior, or thought himself so, to sit before the doorstep
of the denier of justice and fast until right was done him. In
Ireland a magical power was attributed to the ceremony, the effect
of which would be averted by the other person fasting as well.

The authority here quoted is a narrative contained in a fifteenth-century
vellum manuscript found in Lismore Castle in 1814, and
translated by S.H. O'Grady in his “Silva Gadelica.” The narrative
is attributed to an officer of Dermot's court.

Professor Ridgeway (see Report of the Brit. Assoc. for 1908) has
contended that the Megalithic People spoke an Aryan language;
otherwise he thinks more traces of its influence must have survived
in the Celtic which supplanted it. The weight of authority, as
well as such direct evidence as we possess, seems to be against his view.

Adopted 451 B.C. Livy entitles them “the fountain of all public
and private right.” They stood in the Forum till the third century
A.D., but have now perished, except for fragments preserved in various
commentaries.

Small stones, crystals, and gems were, however, also venerated.
The celebrated Black Stone of Pergamos was the subject of an embassy
from Rome to that city in the time of the Second Punic War, the
Sibylline Books having predicted victory to its possessors. It was
brought to Rome with great rejoicings in the year 205. It is stated
to have been about the size of a man's fist, and was probably a
meteorite. Compare the myth in Hesiod which relates how Kronos
devoured a stone in the belief that it was his offspring, Zeus. It was
then possible to mistake a stone for a god.

“The Welsh People,” pp. 616-664, where the subject is fully
discussed in an appendix by Professor J. Morris Jones. “The pre-Aryan
idioms which still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a
language allied to Egyptian and the Berber tongues.”

The etymology of the word “Druid” is no longer an unsolved
problem. It had been suggested that the latter part of the word
might be connected with the Aryan root VID, which appears in
“wisdom,” in the Latin videre, &c., Thurneysen has now shown that
this root in combination with the intensive particle dru would yield
the word dru-vids, represented in Gaelic by draoi, a Druid, just as
another intensive, su, with vids yields the Gaelic saoi, a sage.

See Rice Holmes, “Cæsar's Conquest,” p. 15, and pp. 532-536.
Rhys, it may be observed, believes that Druidism was the religion of
the aboriginal inhabitants of Western Europe “from the Baltic to
Gibraltar” (“Celtic Britain,” p. 73). But we only know of it
where Celts and dolmen-builders combined. Cæsar remarks of the
Germans that they had no Druids and cared little about sacrificial
ceremonies.

“The Irish Mythological Cycle,” by d'Arbois de Jubainville,
p. 6l. The “Dinnsenchus” in question is an early Christian document.
No trace of a being like Crom Cruach has been found as yet in the
pagan literature of Ireland, nor in the writings of St. Patrick, and I
think it is quite probable that even in the time of St. Patrick human
sacrifices had become only a memory.

“You [Celts] who by cruel blood outpoured think to appease the
pitiless Teutates, the horrid Æsus with his barbarous altars, and
Taranus whose worship is no gentler than that of the Scythian Diana”,
to whom captive were offered up. (Lucan, “Pharsalia”, i. 444.)
An altar dedicated to Æsus has been discovered in Paris.

For instance, Pelagius in the fifth century; Columba, Columbanus,
and St. Gall in the sixth; Fridolin, named Viator, “the
Traveller,” and Fursa in the seventh; Virgilius (Feargal) of Salzburg,
who had to answer at Rome for teaching the sphericity of the
earth, in the eighth; Dicuil, “the Geographer,” and Johannes Scotus
Erigena—the master mind of his epoch—in the ninth.

The other two were “The Fate of the Children of Lir” and
“The Fate of the Sons of Usna.” The stories of the Quest of the Sons
of Turenn and that of the Children of Lir have been told in full by
the author in his “High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances,”
and that of the “Sons of Usna” (the Deirdre Legend) by Miss
Eleanor Hull in her “Cuchulain,” both published by Harrap and Co

The name Tara is derived from an oblique case of the nominative
Teamhair, meaning “the place of the wide prospect.” It is now
a broad grassy hill, in Co. Meath, covered with earthworks representing
the sites of the ancient royal buildings, which can all be
clearly located from ancient descriptions.

Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond. He disappeared, it is said,
in 1398, and the legend goes that he still lives beneath the waters of
Loch Gur, and may be seen riding round its banks on his white steed
once every seven years. He was surnamed “Gerald the Poet” from
the “witty and ingenious” verses he composed in Gaelic. Wizardry,
poetry, and science were all united in one conception in the mind of
the ancient Irish.

The ending ster in three of the names of the Irish provinces is
of Norse origin, and is a relic of the Viking conquests in Ireland.
Connacht, where the Vikings did not penetrate, alone preserves its
Irish name unmodified. Ulster (in Irish Ulaidh) is supposed to
derive its name from Ollav Fōla, Munster (Mumhan) from King
Eocho Mumho, tenth in succession from Eremon, and Connacht
was “the land of the children of Conn”—he who was called Conn
of the Hundred Battles, and who died A.D. 157.

The reader may, however, be referred to the tale of Etain and
Midir as given in full by A.H. Leahy (“Heroic Romances of
Ireland”), and by the writer in his “High Deeds of Finn,” and to
the tale of Conary rendered by Sir S. Ferguson (“Poems,” 1886), in
what Dr. Whitley Stokes has described as the noblest poem ever
written by an Irishman.

Ogham letters, which were composed of straight lines arranged
in a certain order about the axis formed by the edge of a squared
pillar-stone, were used for sepulchral inscription and writing
generally before the introduction of the Roman alphabet in Ireland.

It is noticeable that among the characters figuring in the
Ultonian legendary cycle many names occur of which the word
Cu (hound) forms a part. Thus we have Curoi, Cucorb, Beälcu,
&c. The reference is no doubt to the Irish wolf-hound, a fine type
of valour and beauty.